


Temporary Landing

by himynameisv



Series: Three of Us Against the World [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Everyone Needs A Hug, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Thanos’s A+ Parenting, The Author Regrets Nothing, Torture, except maybe Thanos, they’re all trying here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28079484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/himynameisv/pseuds/himynameisv
Summary: At the end of Thor 1, Loki falls into the Void. He keeps falling, and falling, and falling. Landing is both a blessing and a curse.
Relationships: Gamora & Loki & Nebula (Marvel)
Series: Three of Us Against the World [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2028131
Comments: 5
Kudos: 26





	Temporary Landing

**Author's Note:**

> Again, the characters may be slightly OOC, as this is the result of a fluffy white plot bunny I couldn't bear to get rid of. Because I'm so creative, I named him Cotton.
> 
> Also, did you see all those Marvel trailers the other day?! ASDFJKAWEFNIUVWENFLKAWNAEIOWEFAJWBVLAWEL I'm so excited! I have no idea what's going on but I'm so excited!

He's falling.

Falling, and falling, and falling.

Tumbling.

Air whistling by. (Or not.)

Just falling.

Abstractly simple, yet not at the same time.

Falling.

And falling.

And falling.

Never ending, it seems.

 _But it will_ , he tells himself.

It has to.

He's tumbling.

Over and over and over and over again.

He doesn't know when it will stop.

He can't bear the suspense.

When will it stop?

(Why does life have to torture him so?)

Falling.

His throat aches from screaming.

But nobody had heard him.

So had he been screaming at all?

It scares him, distantly, that this is his legacy.

Falling through the darkness of space. Falling in between the stars and civilizations. Falling, falling, falling...

Falling _from_ something. (Letting go.)

 _This is what I deserve_ , he thinks. This is the darkness, the shadow that he is used to.

None of this is for Thor, nor for Odin. (He quickly pushes aside the memory of Frigga.)

This is for him.

Why live in the light, like he'd yearned to before? Why live in the light when it burned him and shunned him and pushed him to the brink of insanity? Why live in the light when the darkness was right there?

Waiting, biding its time.

Waiting.

Following him.

Falling with him.

Hopefully dying with him.

He'll be left as a memory in Asgard, as a scar in its long history.

He'll fall until his body gives up, and only then will this long descent end.

Only then will he experience the euphoria of freedom (even if it's at the gates of Hel).

* * *

His eyes flutter open for a second to see the dizzily passing ground before closing again.

 _Oh_ , his head _aches_. His _chest_ aches. _Everything_ aches.

Somebody - no, multiple somebodies - are dragging him somewhere, over the rough ground littered with rocks and other unpleasant things. He feels too tired and faint to struggle or fight back, and ignores the rips in his clothes and their harsh grips on his arms.

He wonders if this is Hel, if an eternity of pain is what he'll get. It wouldn't be too improbable; the books never did focus on Hel as much as they did Valhalla. He laughs a little, delirious. Thor is Valhalla and he is Hel. So many parallels to be found.

He must black out for a minute or an hour, because the next time he opens his eyes, he is in a cavern-like room. He closes his eyes again and registers the sounds of an engine. A ship, then.

And then it hits him.

Hel shouldn't have ships (at least, as far as he knows). Hel is a barren wasteland where the damned go.

This isn't Hel.

He isn't dead.

He stiffens, and sits up suddenly, only to groan in pain, cradling his right arm to his chest and trying to catalog whatever else is wrong with him (other than his brain, that is, in that he couldn't even get his own death right).

"Hello," a deep voice greets. He abruptly turns his head to the right to see...a gigantic purple Titan. Hadn't their race gone extinct?

"Hello," he rasps out, then coughs. Blood smears his hand, and he watches the gleaming red with an odd fascination. (Red had been Thor's color, bright and bold and assuming.)

"Do you know who I am?" the Titan asks calmly, as if he has all the time in the world. Loki notes that he sits on a throne. _Ahh..._ so he has traded one tyrant for another.

" _Should_ I know who you are?" he bites back. It doesn't come out as threatening as he'd intended, seeing as he's still sitting in a crumpled heap on the floor.

The Titan frowns, seeming to contemplate him a little. It's highly annoying, and he'd really like to go back to dying right about now.

"I am Thanos." Loki stiffens. _The Mad Titan, Destroyer of Worlds. He wants to collect the infinity stones to destroy half of all life in the universe due to his love for Lady Death, as theorized by several people. He will do anything to complete his goal._

He hears shuffling in the shadows behind him, and belatedly realizes that they're not alone.

A shaky smile spreads across his face.

He knows he's not getting out of here unharmed.

* * *

Two Chitauri foot soldiers (And hadn't they gone extinct, too?) drag him to another unnecessarily dark room, following who Loki thinks is a Luphomoid, but could very well be a cyborg with all of her mechanical parts. They chain him tightly to a wall, which is utterly ridiculous, 'cause he can hardly escape with what seem to be two broken legs and a sorcerer in the other room with dark magic flowing off of him in overwhelming waves.

Once he's somewhat settled, which is _so_ thoughtful of her, the Luphomoid calmly takes out a serrated dagger. He closes his eyes briefly, pushing down the steadily growing panic. "Any chance we can reach a bargain?" he asks.

He blocks out what follows.

The first few days give him time to think, at least. He'd learned, after an overlong backstory, that the Mad Titan is still mad, just not as mad as the stories made him out to be. He is _not_ Death's Lover, but rather a missionary off to save the worlds from overpopulation.

It is a surprisingly sentimental reason, which makes Loki despise him all the more. (Besides, his reasoning is slightly off.) So when the Titan offered him a spot in his army, he'd refused.

 _The torture will kill_ _me_ , he tells himself, even as he grits his teeth against the pain. _The torture will kill me_ , he repeats, even as he starts screaming and screaming and screaming as the pain reaches unbearable levels in the following days, the following weeks. _The torture will kill me_. It's the only assurance he has.

He'll get it right this time. (It is, after all, no less than what he deserves.)

* * *

He sees glimpses of other beings, of other possible torturers, in the shadows.

But his main focus is on the Luphomoid. He admires her, in a way, even as she twists his limbs and breaks his bones and wrenches screams out of his throat.

She's ruthless, and detached from whatever she's doing. She successfully distances herself away from him in a way he can't quite seem to do with her. On the surface, she doesn't care, and she _shouldn't_. He's a prisoner and she's the Titan's daughter. But he sees how she hesitates just a little before plunging into him with a dagger, sees how she scowls at him for being so pathetic and at herself for not being good enough (it takes one to know one). He sees that his screams don't give her any satisfaction because this is just a duty to her. (He sees her wince, sometimes, sees how she can't quite get his blood out of the joints in her hands, sees how half of her _isn't actually her_ because of Thanos, because of what he has made her into.)

He sees a lot.

And he survives because of it.

Thanos and his lackeys threaten him with death, but he wants it so badly that it hurts, in and of itself. He doesn't care about how weak he must look, how weak he must seem; he just wants it all to end. (He doesn't think he ever stopped falling.)

He vaguely registers the two sisters (blue and green; high contrast) standing together before he is dragged out of the room again by what he thinks are the same two Chitauri that had taken him to the ship in the first place. Inside, he's mirthful; the first sister failed, so the second sister has to succeed, _will_ succeed, because that's just how it works. (Like him and Thor, once upon a time.)

He remembers that Thanos had given the first daughter a month. Had it really only been a month?

Following the same procedure as the day before, and the day before that, they chain him to the wall. The restraints are strong, and unfortunately magic-restraining (the magic-user must know about his sedir, then; damn).

Unlike the day before and the day before that, the Titan's daughter signals for the foot soldiers to leave, and simply stays there, staring at the wreck that is him.

If she thinks the silence will compel him to give in...then she may be right. Silences are unbearable, and he's always loved to talk. Liquid crawls uncomfortably up his throat, and he spits it out so that dark red splatters the floor near her boots. She doesn't give any indication that she'd noticed, so he scowls, which probably isn't a pretty sight with his mangled face. "What do you want?"

She shrugs, leaning against the traitorously clean table he'd been strapped to the other day. "Nothing."

His own laugh grates at his ears. "Oh _really_. Just go on with it; the favored daughter cannot fail."

She closes her eyes, as if trying to steel herself against the inevitable. Then, she opens her eyes and moves towards him cautiously (as if she's _sorry_ about what is to come); his body tenses in preparation for the pain.

And it comes; oh, it comes.

The one month with the first daughter had allowed him to hone his skills at detachment. _That's a very nice knife; I wish I had my knives so I could_ slit your throat with it. _Oh, if you go just a millimeter deeper, then you'll - ah...yes. Unfortunately, damage to that artery isn't going to kill me. The white of that bone sticking out of flesh is decidedly grotesque._

In this way, he can tell himself that none of this is happening to him, that he isn't a _victim_ (no, no horrid word like that) in all of this. He looks at his own body like it is an object, and maybe the hurt won't be as painful as it surely is.

(Maybe, just maybe, he's a survivor; and it doesn't matter how many times he'll try. He'll rise up and live and _breathe_ , anyways.)

It's after another month (his only measurement of time being Thanos's growing impatience) that the Zehoberei (Speaking of her...weren't they supposed to be extinct, too?) unceremoniously drops her blade, sits in a chair, and says, "I can't do it."

Loki is pretty sure she hadn't been talking to him, but he speaks up anyways. "Can't what? Break me? Whittle me down so I'm nothing, so I am like that sister of yours?" He won't, damn it; he can't.

She looks at him sharply. "Don't talk about Nebula like that."

He smiles; it tears painfully at his face. "You act like you care about her."

"I do."

"Then you _do_ know that your success will mean her failure, correct?"

She frowns, wringing her hands a little. His hands twitch to do the same, but the restraints don't allow him to do that, haven't allowed him to do so in a while. "I didn't think about that," she admits.

"Surprise, surprise," he says, and waits for the pain to come, but it doesn't. That surprises him in a way it shouldn't. (When had he started to assume that everyone was out to hurt him?)

She's silent for a few seconds, and then she slowly meets his eyes. "I don't want to hurt you."

His bruises and cuts throb. "It's a little bit too late for that."

"I _didn't_ want to hurt you."

"Well it doesn't really matter, does it?" He scoffs, wondering if this is going to end right here. She seems to be a tad bit merciful right now, is all.

"Look," she stands, leaning against the chair, "I'm stuck here just like you." She must see the doubt on his face. "I _am._ I'm not being tortured, no, but Thanos took me from my planet after _killing_ half of my people. He molded me, and he molded Nebula into who we are today. So don't act like I _want_ to be here; I don't. I'm just as much a prisoner here as you are."

He stares, and blinks, and closes his eyes tightly. This is too much. Why couldn't she just stick with the usual methods of torture? ( _Torture_ ; that's an ugly word.)

"Don't lie to me," he says lowly, opening his eyes to send her as much of a glare as he possibly can through the numbness that had begun to envelope him.

She sighs. "I'm not." And, in the back of his mind, he knows it's true. He's the God of Lies, after all.

"My name is Loki," he concedes, plopping a fragile stepping stone onto the ground between them.

She smiles (it doesn't split her face in a horrid way), and places another so they are closer together rather than farther apart. "Gamora."

* * *

A new routine is established, and he begins to (norns forbid) _enjoy_ their sessions. They talk about the most random of things, like that one klutz of a Chitauri or his next-door prisoner neighbor. They talk about Nebula, too, and he begins to see why Gamora sticks to her side when Thor did not.

To put it simply, he learns about her, and she learns about him.

Vaguely, he wonders whether this is an elaborate tactic to compel him to let his guard down and spill information, but as the month goes on, even that feeling fades. The torture still happens every now and then to keep up appearances and the like, but the cuts aren't as deep, her hands almost _gentle._ It isn't as painful as it could've been.

Which is a sharp contrast to what occurs next.

There are actually _two_ magic users on this wretched ship: the noseless Ebony Maw and the eyeless Other (quite a pair, to be sure). The problem with them is that the pain isn't entirely physical (not like before, and not like that one time when he and Thor had gotten themselves captured, and Loki had been tortured to get Thor to do what they wanted; oh, how foolish Thor had been then, trying to save him when he wasn't worth it). Maw twists at his magic, dives into his core, and does so with relish. His sedir is in tatters within a few days, and it feels dirtied and touched; it doesn't seem to _belong_ to him anymore. The Other dives into his head, into memories and feelings and meddles and meddles until he's not entirely sure how much of him is actually _him_ anymore. He's not sure how much trust he can put in himself anymore and it _hurts so much_ , because he should've been dead by now but had landed here instead.

This is his penance. _This is what a monster like him deserves_ , he keeps telling himself, over and over and over.

His memories around this time are vague, but come in vivid flashes in his nightmares. He's pretty sure he calls for Thor, calls for his mother because he _just doesn't care anymore_. He cries out and sobs and - and - it's all a whirlwind of pain.

They try to change him even more, try to replace parts of him with metal, try to make him into a machine, but it fails. His sedir doesn't know how to deal with a foreign substance cutting into his body and _staying there_ , and it explodes out so that the walls become coated with his blood and the piece of machinery falls to the floor with a loud _clang_. It takes ages to clean up the room, and, needless to say, they don't try that again. His body does heal, but he is left with ugly scars that make him hate himself even more.

Afterwards, after he has broken and succumbed to Thanos's will, after he has become disgusted with himself, he takes a deep, shuddering breath and gathers up everything from that dark time, locking away the memories in a compartment and throwing away the key.

* * *

The Titan calls him his 'son'. Loki's pretty sure he prefers Odin to Thanos.

But that makes Gamora and Nebula his sisters. There are other members of the so-called Black Order, sure, but they don't matter quite as much to him.

"How are you doing?" Gamora quietly asks as they watch the Chitauri spar. Their footwork, among other things, is, quite frankly, pathetic.

"I'm fine," he grits out. The concern makes something uncomfortably warm blossom in his chest (something normally associated with Thor), and he pushes it away quickly. This is no place for sentiment; sentiment would kill him in a second.

She rolls her eyes. "I mean it. How are you?" He belatedly remembers that she'd been there when they'd discovered the replacement parts to be incompatible with his body (that's the nice way of saying it). The sight of her coated in his blood isn't exactly a fond memory. (The sight of the Other and Maw, on the other hand...)

He concedes with a curt, "I'm healing." And he is, even if his initial goal had been _not_ to heal. (To die, but that isn't a pretty word, is it?)

"You should talk to Nebula," she says, nodding at where her sister - _their_ sister - is standing across the room, arms crossed and wearing a stormy expression on her face. "She still feels guilty about...everything."

He grimaces. Talking to Nebula seems like a much more daunting task than talking to Gamora. "I...feel as if I should wait a few more days."

She raises her eyebrows. "You don't seem like the type of person to turn away from a challenge."

"I'm not - I just - I..." He glares at her, because he has nothing to say. She doesn't budge. "Fine, fine," he grumbles, but still doesn't move.

She nudges him a little, and then outright pushes him towards Nebula when it doesn't work. He ends up knocking into a random Chitauri instead; so when he manages to steady himself, he turns around and glares at her, ignoring the grumbling foot soldier still laying on the ground. She shrugs, looking ever like the innocent girl she is to Thanos, and nods towards Nebula again, who has now disappeared into the weapons room.

He grimaces, and starts walking towards the room as casually as he is able. Meeting Nebula in a room full of weapons is a _perfect_ idea.

* * *

The conversation goes better than he'd expected, and soon enough the three of them have a tentative kind of relationship with one another.

It's admittedly...nice, and he realizes he's all too desperate to accept something like...like _family_ after everything that had happened. (He still feels irrationally guilty for replacing Thor, though.)

"What are you looking at?" Nebula asks him, trying to see what he's seeing out the window of the ship.

"The stars," he mumurs, as if anything louder will alert Thanos or the Other to the growing _...companionship_ between his children.

She raises her eyebrows. "Have you not seen stars before?"

"I have, but...they're not the same."

She tilts her head a little, genuinely curious. She's genuinely curious about a lot of things that seem normal to him. "How so?"

"Well, for one thing, I am not on the ground looking up. I am on a ship looking around." He pauses, thinking of the words to say. "The universe just seems so much more vast out here than on land."

She hums a little in acknowledgement. "If the universe is so vast, then how did the three of us find each other here?"

That shocks a chuckle out of him, and he realizes that he's something close to genuinely _happy_. Normally not something one says about a place where they were tortured. "I don't know, Sister. I don't know."

That night, after Gamora and Nebula have long gone to sleep, he takes out a journal he'd stolen from one of the planets they'd stopped by, and writes and writes and writes. _I am Loki, Prince of Asgard_ , it starts. And it goes on and on, until he's pretty sure he has his old life in there. Centuries of life, all condensed into a ratty old journal.

He is about to stuff the journal into the trash compactor, let it be shredded and let the pieces float into the far reaches of space, before he hesitates. This had been him. This journal had been him. He couldn't just let go of himself (his old self) this easily, could he? It is still a large part of who he _is_.

And then he looks across the room, towards the two other beds. His sisters are curled up against the cold, with flat pillows and thin blankets atop hard mattresses. They were here for him, when everyone else was not. They are his siblings now, his family. They are his home.

He hesitates a second more before placing the journal almost delicately into the trash compactor, muffling the noise of shredding paper with his magic so that Gamora and Nebula stay asleep. He watches, numb, as the pieces of his journal are ejected into the darkness.

Never to be seen again, as it should be.

* * *

Sometimes, they go on missions to capture someone or assassinate someone else. It's all blurred together by now.

Usually, they are successful, seeing as anything less than that would compel Thanos to _punish_ them. (That means giving Nebula new parts. It means Ebony twisting his magic. It means Gamora...suffering isolation from the two of them.) Sometimes, they are not successful, but that's okay, because they suffer together.

However, a successful mission doesn't always mean a clear cut _win._

Something had exploded. He doesn't know what or how or why, but the target had been killed in the blast, which is good. The bad part is that _he_ had been caught in the blast, too.

Norns, everything _burns._ He vaguely feels tears trail down his cheeks at the utter pain of it all. He swallows and closes his eyes briefly; focusing on this isn't going to help him. _Step back a little, think about what you need to do._

He takes a deep breath, opens his eyes, and starts trying to find a way out of the wreckage. _Pain can be fixed_ , he tells himself. _This_ pain can be fixed, at least. He just needs to get back to the ship, he just needs to get back to the ship.

He meets Gamora on the way there. "Loki?!" she asks, astonished for some reason. She looks at him as if he is unfamiliar, so maybe the burns had been more serious than he'd previously thought.

"Keep going," he rasps out.

She shakes her head a little, as if trying to gather herself, and then they continue. Nebula isn't here; she'd been left back at the _Sanctuary_.

After what seems like an eternity, when Loki can barely get one foot in front of the other and his breaths are all he can hear, they make it back to their ship. (They lie to themselves and call it theirs, at least, but it's really not; even small pods for missions belong to Thanos.)

He groans, collapsing onto a bench as Gamora starts the engines and throws back a med kit.

It's when he catches it that he notices his skin is blue. His breathing quickens a little, and he tries to watch detachedly as the cold soothes the peeling blisters and the burns but it doesn't work. _It doesn't work._ He's such a good liar that he'd...that he'd forgotten that -

"Hey. Take care of yourself," Gamora says, taking the container from his shaking hand and grabbing some bandages from inside. Though there is a question in her eyes, she has no idea about the inner turmoil he is in. He watches, entranced, as she wets the bandages a little with water from a canteen before reaching out towards him. At that, Loki immediately snaps out of the haze he'd been in, flinching away from her.

She freezes, eyes wide. Slowly, she says, "I'm not going to hurt you."

His breaths are coming out in gasps. "That's - that's not what I'm worried about."

"Then what _are_ you worried about?" she asks. She sounds like she's soothing a wild animal. Perhaps she is.

"I could hurt _you_ ," he says in a pathetically small voice, not meeting her eyes.

She sighs (How could she seem so _calm_ about this?) and sits down beside him, placing a hand on his clothed shoulder. She must feel the cold emanating from him, but doesn't comment, doesn't flinch. It's what he admires most about her, that she can be so soft yet so strong at the same time. (Almost like Frigga. _Almost_.)

"Is it about your blue skin?"

He nods, shutting his eyes tight, preparing for an insult or a painful remark or _something_.

"You look more like Nebula now."

He opens his eyes, confused, and turns towards her slowly. He's not sure if she can see the fear swimming in his eyes (fear of being rejected, fear of himself). He hasn't been sure of much, lately. "You're not...I don't know, repulsed?"

"Why would I be?" And she's just - she's so genuinely confused. She's concerned about him, and she _doesn't care_. Not about this (pretty much the reason why he'd fallen to Thanos in the first place).

He clears his throat and ignores the burning of his eyes. "There was a war. My so-called _father_ stole me from his enemy." He laughs mirthlessly. "I was his enemy's _son_ , the King of the Frost Giant's _son_. I grew up hearing stories about the villainous and monstrous Frost Giants, and to find out that I _am_ one...that - that broke me, I suppose. That was the tipping point."

She nods, and she seems to _understand_ and it's so much nicer than he'd expected so he might just break down right then and there. "You're not a monster, Loki."

He sniffs a little, and she continues. "I mean it. You're not a monster. Just because you were born some way doesn't mean you're less. It means you're better, for overcoming that."

"I don't think I've gotten to the overcoming part yet," he mumbles, a fragile smile on his face.

She smiles, too; firm and strong. "That's okay. It'll come."

* * *

When he manages to gather up his magic to put the glamour back on, she frowns at him, but says nothing. (For some reason, he has the odd feeling that she's disappointed in him.) They don't talk about it again, and it just becomes some unspoken thing.

* * *

Apparently, they hadn't been very subtle.

Sometime after the mission, he finds himself casually sharpening his daggers on his bed; or, well, the closest thing to a bed he's going to get in this place. At least Thanos had allowed them the liberty of choosing their own weapons.

"What's going on with you and Gamora?" Nebula asks suddenly. He looks up.

"Why don't you-"

"I already asked her, and she said to ask you." Nebula is staring at him, intent in her mission to get an answer.

Loki sighs. "Well - I, ah-" He lifts up his right hand and peels away the glamour up to his forearm. The air immediately feels warmer there.

She blinks. "Oh." She blinks again. That had probably not been what she was expecting. "My blue's still better though."

He scoffs, nervous fluttering fading from his chest; in its place is _acceptance_. "It's hardly a competition."

"Your blue is a light, icy blue. A _baby_ blue. Mine's darker, and so much cooler."

He scowls, but it's half-hearted. "That's the point. I could freeze you with one touch." He lets the glamour hide his hand again so that he is back to being someone he mostly recognizes.

She frowns, poking at the area as if she wants her fingers to be frozen. Loki humors her for a few seconds before pulling his hand away. She flops onto the bed next to him and sighs in what seems to be relief. "That's nice. For a second, I thought the two of you had..." She awkwardly makes a few suggestive gestures before deciding he got the point.

"What?! No! Nebula, we're _siblings_."

She raises her hands in the air. "It seemed like a reasonable assumption to me."

" _Norns_ , Nebula. I didn't need that particular image in my head."

She laughs, and it's surprisingly loud - _carefree._ "That was the point." He has to smile along. For some reason, he's happy that he made her laugh.

Gamora pokes her head into the room then. "What are you laughing about?"

* * *

Eventually, Proxima and Corvus come back from a mission with a scepter. Loki can feel the waves of something ancient coming from it. Something like...like an infinity stone. He's never been in the presence of one before, but he's extremely sure about this, and so is, apparently, Thanos.

He and Ebony Maw are tasked with searching for the other stones from the magical signature of this one ( _the mind stone_ , he eventually realizes after working with it for a little while). The other sorcerer smiles, and says to him, "Perhaps you were worth saving after all." It sends shivers up Loki's spine.

He hates this work. Having his magic bent and broken was bad enough; intertwining it with Ebony's to try and work together is even worse. The only satisfaction he has is that Ebony _needs_ him; he can't do this alone.

And yet, "I have detected the space stone on Terra," that back-stabbing, telekinetic, skull-like being says, ever the complacent servant.

Loki frowns (Terra?) but says nothing. Thanos smiles condescendingly down at Maw, which causes Loki to become begrudgingly glad that it isn't directed towards him, even if he doesn't get any credit for the work he'd done. "Wonderful," Thanos says. He paces around the room for a bit, thinking and thinking and thinking.

And then he looks at Loki. Loki freezes. Had he - had he done something wrong? "I have been thinking," he says calmly, as if he hasn't just scared Loki half to death, "about your work."

He just manages to stop his voice from quivering. "Has it been satisfactory, my lord?"

Thanos looks at him sharply. " _Father_ ," Loki concedes. _Please don't punish me please don't punish me please don't punish me._

The Titan nods, apparently appeased for now. "You are my newest child, and yet you have impressed me greatly, even more so than the ones I've had for years." Loki stares; he doesn't know where this is going. He also highly doubts that he'd impressed Thanos more than Gamora had. "It would, therefore, be the right course of action to send you to Terra to retrieve the stone."

Loki nods. (What else is he supposed to do?) "Thank you, Father."

Thanos smiles, and Loki tries not to shrink under his gaze. "Take the next few weeks to prepare."

He all but scurries out of the room when he is dismissed, but Maw catches up to him anyways. "It's not like you had any choice in the matter," he whispers into his ear.

"I know," he says. But there's power in assent, anyways.

* * *

He starts planning. Midgard (And why are there so many different names for one measly planet?) is more advanced than he'd previously thought. He'd seen enough of that when Thor had been banished there.

Some of the humans are, admittedly, quite intelligent.

Which means it wouldn't be too improbable for him to lose.

One night, he walks up to Gamora, who's leaning against a railing and seems to be lost in thought. He hates to disrupt her night further, but this has to be done. "You'll take care of Nebula, right? If I'm gone?" he asks. It's Nebula he's worried about the most.

Gamora turns towards him, furrowing her brows. "What do you mean?"

They don't know anything; he doesn't want to tell them, doesn't want to ruin whatever _this_ is, yet. "I mean...if I happen to die or something."

She snorts. "You're not going to do that. We wouldn't let you."

"I'm being serious," he says, fiddling a little with his shirtsleeve even as that same warmth floods his chest and a slight smile spreads across his face.

"I was being serious, too," she says determinedly, having no idea what the future holds for them.

* * *

It's sentiment. Foolish, wonderful sentiment that leads him to take what magic he can spare and mold it into something to give.

To Nebula, he gives a beautiful necklace with his magic.

To Gamora, he gives a sharp blade with swirling designs.

No less than what they deserve.

So when the portal opens, and Thanos hands him the scepter, he is not afraid.

No. This is just the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> I retract what I said in the last installment of this series. This is the longest fic I have written so far. Lol. These just keep getting longer and longer. I feel like I stuffed so much into these first two installments that there won't be much left for Gamora's perspective. Oh well; I'll think of something. Please read and review!


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